District 88 seeks community volunteers for Feed My Starving Children event

On Saturday, the students from DuPage District 88 schools will help pack 100,000 nutrient-rich, specially prepared meals to be sent to malnourished children around the world. At least they will if almost 300 additional volunteers can be recruited.

Since the beginning of the year, a project has been in the works for the senior classes at Willowbrook and Addison Trail high schools to organize and host a Feed My Starving Children Mobile Pack event. The event is scheduled for this Saturday at Willowbrook, but the organizers are still short on volunteers and looking for community support.

Feed My Starving Children is an organization with a center in Aurora where volunteers package specially formulated meals for impoverished children. These meals are shipped throughout the world and some are even distributed in the U.S.

To host a Mobile Pack, the student organizers had to commit to raising the $22,000 necessary to pack 100,000 meals.

Currently, they've raised about $14,000, said Victoria Phillips, one of the senior class presidents at Willowbrook who's leading the project. They don't need to have all of the money until two months after the event takes place, so they're right on track, she said.

The big challenge now is that the students need manpower. It will take 500 volunteers to make the project a reality. Originally, the project was intended to be exclusive to students at Willowbrook and Addison Trail, but when the volunteer numbers remained low, the event organizers opened it up to community volunteers.

"We never thought we'd be in this situation," Phillips said. "We are definitely trying to find more people to help."

She said she's hoping the project will serve as a way to engage the whole community.

The Mobile Pack event takes place Saturday at Willowbrook High School, 1250 S. Ardmore Ave. in Villa Park. There are two-hour packing sessions available from 10 a.m. to noon, 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. and 3 to 5 p.m.

Anyone interested in volunteering can register online at d88fmsc.com or call the school at 630-530-3400.